Many resources are presently available to assist businesses in finding suitable candidates to fill available positions. Perhaps the most common recruiting method is direct advertising by employers in the employment section of a newspaper, or in a magazine that is targeted to people having specific skills (e.g., engineers, attorneys, computer programmers, and so on). A typical employment advertisement will generally include a brief description of the available position, along with the address, telephone number, facsimile number and/or e-mail address of the employer. Applicants can apply for the advertised position by sending their resumes directly to the employer by facsimile, regular mail or e-mail. An employer will usually have a person in its employment or human resources department screen the resumes to identify the applicants best suited for the position.
Many disadvantages are inherent in this conventional recruiting method. For instance, a magazine and especially, a newspaper, has a limited amount of subscribers and generally services only a limited region. Therefore, the company's advertisement may never be seen by many qualified people outside of that region. In order to distribute the advertisement more universally, it may be necessary for the employer to run the advertisement in several newspapers or magazines, thus substantially increasing the advertising expense incurred by the company.
Furthermore, this conventional method is also very inefficient even after the resumes are received by the company. For example, because the resumes must be manually organized and screened, a person in the company's recruitment or human resources department may need to spend a significant amount of time every day performing this task. In a large corporation having many positions becoming available on a daily basis, it may be necessary for several people to devote most of their time to organizing and screening applicants' resumes. Furthermore, because a large amount of resumes may be received, the task of organizing and screening those resumes may be particularly onerous and thus, a certain resume may be overlooked or mishandled. As a result, a candidate who is well suited for a position may never be considered.
In an attempt to increase the scope of their advertising, some companies have begun using computer networks, such as the Internet, to post employment opportunities. For instance, a company may set up its own "home page" on the World Wide Web (the "Web") on which various job openings can be posted. Anyone who subscribes to the internet can thus access or "log on" to that company's home page, determine which positions at that company are available, and send a resume to the company via regular mail, facsimile or e-mail.
Although a home page can be a useful tool in enabling a company to expand its advertising capabilities, a home page provides no mechanism for organizing or screening resumes that are received. The received resumes still must be organized and screened by a person in the company's human resources department in the traditional manner. Hence, the possibility still exists that a resume will be overlooked or mishandled.
Furthermore, in order for an applicant to see the company's advertisement, the applicant must be aware that the company exists and has a home page on the Web. Hence, if the applicant has never heard of the company, the applicant would not be aware that company has a home page. Many highly qualified candidates therefore may overlook a company's advertisement because they simply are not aware that the company exists.
Several advertisement agencies have recognized these potential shortcomings and have developed "career bulletin boards" on the Web. A career bulletin board, such as CareerMosaic, MonsterBoard, and the like, is an electronic bulletin board on which messages can be "posted" as on a conventional bulletin board. A career bulletin board is advantageous because it provides a single location at which many companies can post employment opportunities. A job seeker can log onto the bulletin board to peruse the posted available positions. However, several problems are inherent with career bulletin boards.
For example, if a company wants a job seeker to see complete descriptions of their job openings, the company must send those complete descriptions directly to the bulletin board provider. The computer at the site of the bulletin board provider must store all of the company's information and thus, must have access to a large amount of memory.
Furthermore, the computer must be capable of continuously accessing that information to display it on the bulletin board. These accessing and displaying operations, which involve the handling of large amounts of data, may slow the computer's operation significantly. As a consequence, if many job seekers are accessing the bulletin board at the same time, the computer may be incapable of handling this high level of activity. Hence, additional job seekers may be unable to access the bulletin board at that time, or job seekers who are already logged onto the bulletin board may experience very slow service. Also, if a failure occurs with the computer, the entire bulletin board will become unavailable and thus, every job posting will become unavailable.
Additionally, bulletin boards are typically set up so that a job seeker submits a resume directly to the bulletin board provider. The resume is stored in a central repository along with all of the other resumes, and must be forwarded to the company to which the job seeker is applying for employment. This type of arrangement decreases the confidentiality of the resumes, because they are handled by the bulletin board provider instead of only by personnel at the company. Also, this type of arrangement decreases the company's confidentiality, since a complete job description is sent to the bulletin board provider. Furthermore, once the resumes are received by the company, they still must be manually organized and screened. In addition, if a company updates its listing of job descriptions, the updated list must be sent to every bulletin board to which the company subscribes.
It is further noted that the direct advertising methods discussed above require that a job seeker monitor the advertisements on a regular basis in order to ascertain whether a specific position is available. Hence, instead of relying on advertisements, an employer or job seeker may use a professional recruiter to find suitable candidates for available positions and vice-versa. However, the efforts of professional recruiters are limited by the resources available to them.
For example, if a recruiter has been hired by an employer to find suitable candidates for an available position, the recruiter must undertake efforts such as "cold calling" suitable candidates employed by other companies, networking with other recruiters to obtain names of potential candidates, and the like. Conversely, if a recruiter has been hired by a job seeker to find a suitable position, the recruiter may need to undertake similar efforts to locate such a position. Hence, it is likely that a recruiter will overlook available positions and suitable candidates. Furthermore, since recruiters charge a substantial fee for their services, many companies and job seekers are reluctant to use a recruiter and incur such expense.
In order to assist companies in facilitating their recruiting efforts, several software companies have developed resume screening programs which can be configured to screen a collection of resumes for the most qualified candidates. Resumes that are received by an employer who uses this software are first scanned into a computer and stored. The computer running the resume screening software can then be controlled to search those resumes for various attributes, such as college degrees, prior experience, special qualifications, and the like. The computer will then provide a list of the most qualified candidates out of the entire collection of resumes. This computerized screening and sorting method allows human resource personnel to devote more time to other tasks.
However, known resume screening software does not assist employers in advertising available positions. Although the resume screening software is useful once a resume has been received by the company, it provides no advantage in enabling the company to seek out the most qualified candidates. A company must still use either the conventional methods of advertising (e.g., newspaper, magazines, professional recruiter, etc.) or a career bulletin board in order to solicit resumes. Hence, the drawbacks associated with those types of advertising methods have not been resolved.
Therefore, a continuing need exists for a system which will maximize the scope of a company's advertising efforts while also providing a reasonably secure and efficient manner of forwarding resumes to the company and enabling the company to efficiently screen and categorize the resumes received. Additionally, a continuing need exists to assist a job seeker in locating available positions quickly and effectively.